Bower was a particular man. He insisted that the men who worked for him wore a dark suit, a starched white shirt, and, until the 1960s, a hat. McKinsey & Co, he said, was not a business but a ‘practice’; it didn’t take on jobs, it took on ‘engagements’; it was not a company, it was a ‘firm’. Eventually it simply became known as ‘The Firm’. Duff McDonald wrote a history of The Firm, arguing that its advocacy of scientific approaches to management transformed the business world.
